| Linkability |
| =========== |
| |
| This file has ideas only, so far. Comments welcome. |
| |
| Scenarios |
| --------- |
| |
| * soduku app: |
| * want to share the board layout, but not my progress so far |
| * want to transfer my progress to another device |
| * a wikipedia-like app: |
| * follow links to other topics |
| * have links from other apps (e.g. search) to a specific subsection of a topic |
| * an instant-messenger app: |
| * bookmark specific group conversations |
| * a social network app: |
| * link to specific posts |
| * link to social network constructs like user lists (twitter), communities (g+), walls (fb), users… |
| * an IDE |
| * want to save a particular state of open windows, maybe to share with other developers |
| * Navigation app |
| * want to link to different modes of the app: nav mode, search page, personal profile, settings, etc |
| * want to link to specific points of interest, either public (restaurant) or private (home, work, saved locations) |
| * want to link to a specific map location, zoom level, direction, angle, time of day (for shadows), route (for navigation) |
| * want to link to a destination in nav mode (without a route) |
| * Podcast app |
| * want to link to a specific view (e.g. in doggcatcher, feeds, audio, video, news...) |
| * want to link to a specific podcast (maybe independently of the app) |
| * want to link to a specific time in a specific episode of a specific podcast |
| * save ui state (e.g. size of ui area vs podcast list in doggcatcher, scroll position in a list, specific settings window being on top of specific tab at a specific scroll position, etc) |
| * News app |
| * categories |
| * articles |
| * sets of categories |
| * sets of categories + a selected category + a scroll position |
| * app sections (e.g. Newsstand’s Explore vs Read Now vs My Library) |
| * specific settings in the settings section of the app |
| * Code Review Tools |
| * a specific code review |
| * a specific file in a specific code review |
| * code review plus scroll position |
| * specific comment |
| * the state of the UI, such as which changes are visible, which comments are expanded, sort settings, filter settings, etc; whether the settings window is open, what tab it’s open to, what field is focused… |
| |
| UI |
| -- |
| |
| * Sharing current state to another device using NFC: just put the phones together, the active app(s?) serialise their state to a “URL” and that is sent to the other device |
| * App exposes a “permalink” or “get link” UI that exposes a string you can Share (a la Android’s Share intent) or copy and paste. |
| * An accessibility tree should expose the URL of each part of the app so that a user with an accessibility tool can bookmark a particular location in the app to jump to it later. |
| |
| Thoughts |
| -------- |
| |
| * Seems like you link to three kinds of things: |
| * different in-app concepts, which might be shared across apps |
| * specific posts in a social network |
| * users |
| * particular game board starting configurations, game levels |
| * wikipedia topics |
| * search results |
| * POIs in a map |
| * videos on Vimeo, YouTube, etc |
| * a code review / CL / pull request |
| * a comment on a code review |
| * a file in a code review |
| * a comment in a blog post |
| * telephone numbers |
| * lat/long coordinates |
| * podcasts |
| * different top-level parts of the app (shallow state) |
| * e.g. in Facebook, linking to the stream; in G+, linking to the communities landing page, etc |
| * in a maps app, the mode (satellite, navigation, etc) |
| * deep state |
| * the current state of a particular game board, e.g. all the piece positions in chess, all the current choices in soduku... |
| * what windows are open, what field is focused, what widgets are expanded, the precise view of a 3D map, etc |
| * subsection of a topic in wikipedia (scroll position) |
| * Since almost every app is going to have app-specific items, we need to make the item space trivially extensible (no registry, no fixed vocabulary). This means that common items (e.g. lat/long coordinates, podcasts) will probably evolve conventions organically within communities rather than in a centralised fashion |
| * We don’t have to use URLs as they are known today, but doing so would leverage the existing infrastructure which might be valuable |
| |
| Ideas |
| ----- |
| |
| * Two kinds of URLs: application state, and “things”. |
| * Application state URLs consist of an identifier for the app, plus a blob of data for how to open the app |
| * Thing URLs identify a thing, either by string name, opaque identifier, or more structured data (e.g. two comma-separated floating point numbers for lat/long). |
| * Thing URLs have a label saying what they are, e.g. “poi” or “geo” or “cl-comment” or something. |
| * Maybe “apps” are just things, and going to an app is like picking that app thing from the system app, the same way you’d pick a post from a social network app. |
